April 13 is National Scrabble Day recognizing the game that is played worldwide but used to be made right here on Long Island when gamemaker Selchow and Righter, based in Bay Shore, purchased the rights to produce the famous word game in 1952.
So, in celebration of National Scrabble Day, which honestly we think should be every day, we present some crazy and historical facts about Scrabble!
Inventor Alfred M. Butts
- Alfred Mosher Butts was born on April 13, 1899
- National Scrabble Day commemorates his birth
- Alfred M. Butts invented Scrabble in 1931 during the Depression
- He lived in Jackson Heights, Queens at the time
- At the time he was a jobless architect who enjoyed crossword puzzles
- He originally called it “Criss Cross Words”
- Butts used the front page of The New York Times to calculate how many tiles there should be and how many points each letter should be worth based on how often the letters showed up
- According to one story, his “realization that vowels flood the language resulted in 12 E's, 9 A's and 8 O's, but only 1 Q, Z, K, J and X”
- The original sets were handmade by Butts
- He sold the games for $1.50 each
- His wife was a better player
- Mrs. Butts once scored 234 for the word "quixotic”
- Butts said, Mrs. Butts "beat me at my own game," literally
- No gamemaker wanted his invention and for 20 years he struggled to sell it
- Butts was an artist and had six of his drawings collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City
- Butts died in 1993 at 93-years-old
Scrabble Becomes Scrabble
- In 1948, Butts’ close friend, James Brunot, took over the game and named it “Scrabble”
- Scrabble is a real word that means, “to grope frantically”
- Brunot copyrighted the game and began producing it in a small plant in Newtown, CT
- In 1949, Brunot made 2,400 games but lost money
- In 1952 the suggested retail price of Scrabble was $3
- Butts received royalty payments from Brunot for the game
- Butts earned royalties of about three cents a set
- "One-third went to taxes," he said. "I gave one-third away, and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life."
- The game didn’t catch on until a Macy’s executive played it at a resort in the 1950s
- He asked the department store to stock the game from then on it took off
- Brunot hired workers to produce 6,000 sets a week but they could not meet the increasing demand
- Selchow & Righter agreed to produce the game to help meet production
- The game maker paid Brunot a royalty (about 5% of the wholesale price) until 1971 to produce the game
- Brunot died in 1984
Selchow & Righter
- The game maker was founded in 1867 by Elisha Selchow (then called E.G. Selchow & Co.)
- He also obtained the rights to make Parcheesi
- The company changed its name to Selchow & Righter in 1880 when partner John Righter came on board
- Selchow & Righter started making Scrabble in the 1950s after the Macy’s executive discovered it
- Selchow & Righter had originally rejected the game years previous but when it became popular, they saw it as a moneymaker
- Selchow & Righter acquired the game outright from Brunot in 1971 for a substantial fee
- Scrabble was manufactured by Selchow & Righter in Bayshore until 1973 when the company moved operations to a space near MacArthur Airport in Holbrook
- The company retained its Bay Shore plant as a warehouse
- Scrabble accounted for up to 40% of the company’s business at the time
- In 1986, Selchow & Righter was sold to Coleco Industries along with Scrabble
- Coleco Industries went bankrupt three years later and in 1989 it was sold to Hasbro
Current State of Scrabble
- The game hasn’t changed very much since Butts invented it
- When a player uses all seven tiles to make a word, it’s called a “bingo”
- An organization called NASPA (formerly the National Scrabble Association) is dedicated to tournament, club and avid home Scrabble players in North America
- John D. Williams, Jr, from Greenport, is a local expert and author of a number of Scrabble books, including Everything Scrabble
- Williams is responsible for the process that led to the formation of NASPA
- He also “helped write the Scrabble newsletter for Selchow and Righter while it was manufacturing the game in Bay Shore,” according to the New York Times
- “When [Selchow & Righter] folded, he worked out a deal to continue promoting the game, as the National Scrabble Association, first from his own home in Greenport, then from a small building nearby,” the New York Times reported
- The prize at the Scrabble national championships is $10,000
- Until 2013, the NSA operated under a mandate from Hasbro to promote the game in North America, concentrating on the school programs and casual clubs
- On Long Island, Scrabble clubs meet at Starbucks, Panera, Barnes & Noble, and other places to play
- Scrabble is found in one out of every three American homes, according to History.com
- Over 150 million sets have been sold worldwide
- Between one and two million sets are sold each year in North America
- Scrabble is sold in 121 countries with 29 different language versions
- The first Scrabble world championship was played in London
- The reigning Scrabble world champ as of 2022 is Nigel Richards from New Zealand
- Richards is known to be the greatest Scrabble tournament player of all time, winning multiple tournaments
- In 2004, Scrabble was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame
- In 2005 Scrabulous, an unauthorized online version of Scrabble, appeared
- In 2007 Scrabulous was on Facebook
- Hasbro sued the inventors of Scrabulous and it was renamed Lexulous and taken off Facebook
- Words With Friends is a Scrabble-like game developed by Newtoy (which changed its name to Zynga with Friends) in 2009
- Words with Friends is not associated with Scrabble
- In 2017, Words With Friends became the most popular mobile game in the US